


pirate superheroes (explode things and steal stuff)

by kangeiko



Category: Nextwave (Comic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:33:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How to put together an elite fighting team. With bonus lobsters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pirate superheroes (explode things and steal stuff)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taurenova (JenNova)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenNova/gifts).



> Many thanks to L & A for beta-ing duties!

 

 **THE NEXTWAVE SQUAD:**   
**THERE'S NO RECRUITING STATION**

 

Monica is the first to be recruited into H.A.T.E., personally selected by the H.A.T.E Director to head up the - highly experimental and likely to cause many problems down the line but why the fuck not - elite anti-terrorism Nextwave Squad.

"Look, I'm not really interested," she says when Dirk Anger calls. "I already have a pretty good gig right here. I mean, I'm an _Avenger_."

 **At this point in time, being an Avenger entails sorting**   
**out the dry-cleaning for all the super-uniforms.**

“I’m just not available.”

 **Monica Rambeau is a fucking liar.**

 

Dirk Anger smiles winningly into the camera. “Miss Rambeau, H.A.T.E offers all its agents a handsome remuneration package –“

 **H.A.T.E.: Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort**   
**is going to recruit an elite squad to blow things up.**   
**This is the best plan ever.**

“Really. Not interested.”

“And ammo. So much fucking ammo. And a pension scheme –“

“You’re wasting your time.”

“- in guns and pornography.”

Monica pauses for a moment. “What kind of guns?”

 **Monica Rambeau has decided**   
**she doesn’t want to be Captain Marvel anymore.**

 

***

 

 **THE NEXTWAVE SQUAD:**   
**WHERE PEOPLE BLOW UP SHIT ALL THE FUCKING TIME**

 

“You can’t just _shoot_ them,” Monica says, exasperated. “They’re civilians!”

Aaron Stack looks back at the milling crowds. “Will they make the same squelchy noise as terrorists?”

“I suppose.”

Aaron pauses thoughtfully for a moment, turning wide metallic eyes to look back at her. “Do you have another way of telling the fleshy ones apart?”

 

 **Monica Rambeau finds being leader of the Nextwave Squad**   
**very different from the Avengers.**

 **Still. At least she doesn't have to sort out the dry-cleaning.**

 

***

 

 **THE NEXTWAVE SQUAD:**   
**BUY AMERICAN**

 

 **Elsa Bloodstone is a monster-hunter.**

Her babies are stranded on the other side of the room, out of ammo. _Oh, fuck it_ , Elsa thinks, and grabs the nearest fire-axe, swinging it at the monster’s head. “For queen and country!”

 

 **Elsa Bloodstone doesn’t know**   
**what the fuck she’s doing**   
**on this side of the Atlantic.**

 

The stupid axe breaks on impact. Elsa stares at it, disgusted. “Oh, cock. This is not the time for shabby construction.”

“Hey, English, up here!”

Hovering directly above her is the Captain, with Tabitha hoisted over his shoulders like a slab of meat. “Ow ow ow stop being so fucking grabby!”

“Fuck’s sake, I am not grabbing you, I’m carrying you!”

Badly, from what Elsa can make out. “Was there a reason the two of you decided to distract me from me from my monster?” She waves her broken axe above her head in demonstration. “Unless you have some non-American equipment up there, I’m not interested.”

The monster makes a growly noise and tries to worm a purple tentacle into Elsa’s trousers. She stomps on it with her stiletto heel. “I’m talking to someone else; you will simply have to _wait your turn_.”

Above her, Tabby is squirming on the Captain’s shoulders and producing an exacto penknife from her boot. “Take this, it's from someplace foreign!” She yells, and throws it.

Elsa catches the little switchblade and examines it perfunctorily, kicking the purple tentacled monster in the head in the process. “Still bloody shoddy, is what it is,” she says, peeved, and slices off a tentacle to see just how shoddy it actually is.

The monster waves a tentacle stump and whines a complaint.

 **Elsa Bloodstone is fed up with purple tentacled monsters**   
**and is considering demonstrating her displeasure**   
**by covering her bullets in condoms.**

 **Ribbed ones.**

 

***

 

 **THE NEXTWAVE SQUAD:**   
**THERE’S NO EXCUSE**

“I don’t actually know what I’m looking at,” Monica says, squinting at the viewscreen. "Is he the villain? What the hell are those?"

“Lobsters,” Aaron says with pride. “Cybernetic ones.”

On the viewscreen, they are watching a teenaged boy with white hair looking emo and waving his arms around while stuff floats around him and bumps into things. The two cybernetic lobsters at his feet are clacking menacingly and tugging on their leads.

 

 **Gomi and his telepathically-controlled cybernetic lobsters:**   
**there’s no fucking excuse, Marvel.**

 

She pauses for a long moment, wondering if she actually wants to know the answer to this. “… are they… people?” She asks eventually. “Or the self-serving main course?”

Aaron extends a corkscrew, a potato peeler, a screwdriver and a pizza-slicer from his arm and waves them semi-menacingly. “They are close enough to my robot self for me to find that disgusting,” he says.

Monica nods and pats him on the shoulder. “OK, so I’ll just eat the non-robot bits.”

Aaron thinks about that for the moment. The hardware is withdrawn into his arm with a _snikt_. “Fine. But I want some beer.”

Monica slaps the back of his chair on her way out. “No drinking while driving.”

 

 **Aaron does actually care**   
**what happens to the cybernetic lobsters.**   
**He finds the one on the left strangely alluring.**

 

***

 

 **THE NEXTWAVE SQUAD:**   
**WILL STEAL ALL YOUR STUFF**

 

“You’re holding it upside down.” Elsa is sipping her tea and rotating one long finger slowly. Meanwhile, Tabby is trying to work out how to right the giant blueprint.

“Look, who stole this stupid marketing plan?” Tabby says eventually, losing patience with it. She slaps the Beyond Corporation © plan down on the table.

 **Beyond Corp. © is the new, friendlier face of**   
**S.I.L.E.N.T., a terrorist cell. Beyond Corp. ©**   
**just won the bidding process to fund H.A.T.E.**

 

Elsa rolls her eyes. “I honestly don’t know whether you’re making this up or you’re actually _that stupid_.”

“You’re just jealous because _I_ got to break into a top-secret room in a top-secret base and steal top-secret plans and make stuff ‘splode. And what did you do? You drank tea and told the stupid soldiers to stop running away.” Tabby tries to work out the diagram by turning it another 90 degrees clockwise. “So if I say it’s _this_ way up –“

“Don’t force me to slap you all,” Monica says, plucking the somewhat crumpled plan from Tabby’s hands.

The Captain brightens at this possibility..

“Well?” Elsa asks after a moment.

Tabby has stopped glaring and is crowded up behind Monica, staring over her shoulder and trying to work out what she is looking at. “Is that –“

“Oh,” Monica says. “XXXX.”

 **Monica Rambeau didn’t actually read her contract.**

 

***

 

 **THE NEXTWAVE SQUAD:**   
**YOU KNOW THIS BIT**

 

 **If you don’t, you should read**   
**NEXTWAVE: Agents of H.A.T.E.**   
**There are explosions and koala bears.**   
**Go on, we’ll wait.**

 

Aaron is less interested in red dinosaurs than in his sexy new chest-hole. Aaron thinks he’s going to keep his new chest-hole just the way it is. Maybe he’ll tidy it up a bit so it’s a little less sloppy-looking, but there is definitely something about the constant smell of machine oil that is turning him on.

“You need to stop fingering yourself,” Monica tells him. “Or I will remove your fingers.”

Aaron puts his hand back in his chest defiantly. “Shan’t.”

Monica turns to look at him and cracked her knuckles.

 

 **ALSO**

 

“We brought you something,” the Captain says, shuffling from foot to foot and looking a bit embarrassed. Tabby is bouncing up and down next to him, looking too gleeful for Oh, Christ o’clock in the morning.

Elsa looks up from where she is pulling a pile of broccoli bodies together into a giant broccoli bonfire. She has spent the previous day scouting out their new invisible floating base headquarters, and the state of the place has left her in a foul mood. “Yes?”

The Captain shuffles a little bit more and Tabby elbows him sharply. “Show her,” she demands.

Elsa puts up an eyebrow and shoulders her shovel at this. “Tell me what you two brain-dead yokels are hiding or piss off before I use my shiny new shovel.”

The Captain coughs and eventually holds out his discovery, rescued from the clutches of the broccoli-vestry. In the palm of his hand is a small box of… loose-leaf tea.

 

 **Elsa has not had a cup of tea for three days now.**   
  
**She would gladly remove your head**   
**and defecate down your neck to rectify this.**

The shovel falls to the ground, unnoticed, as Elsa reaches out trembling, tea-deprived fingers.

 

 

***

 

 **THE NEXTWAVE SQUAD:**   
**HEALING AMERICA BY BLOWING SHIT UP**

 

“This base is XXXX,” the Captain says, aiming a kick at one of the crumbling walls.

Monica turns to glare at him. “Don’t kick my invisible floating base thing,” she says, “it’s got enough fucking holes in it. I don't want it falling over.” She prods one of the bigger ones thoughtfully. “We’re going to need to patch up some of this crap.”

“I really don’t see the point, darling,” Elsa says, somewhat placated now that she has had a decent cup of tea. She looks around and sniffs disdainfully. “It’s a bit of a dive, but if we’re going down that route we might as well embrace it.”

“I would prefer a less XXXX base,” Aaron supplies, still fingering the hole in his sternum with one finger less than regulation. “One with better appliances.”

“Urgh, I didn’t need to know that,” Tabby says, making a face.

 

 

 **Monica Rambeau knows that Jane’s Fighting Airships**   
**is having a corporate fair a mere two states over.**

 

 

Monica sighs and looks heavenward. “If I take you shopping for a new ship, will you promise to behave like an actual squad?”

 

 **Monica Rambeau thinks they sort of… do.**

 

The Captain decides that this is the moment to try using Aaron’s chest-hole as an ashtray.

 

***

 

 **you have been reading  
NEXTWAVE**

 **go away now**

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Gomi and his cybernetic lobsters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomi_%28comics%29) are real Marvel characters, on the same team as... Devil Dinosaur. It was only a matter of time, really.


End file.
